12 Steps To EBS-Backed EMI Bliss on Eucalyptus

In previous posts, I shared how to use Ubuntu Cloud Images and eustore with Eucalyptus and AWS. This blog entry will focus on how to use these assets to create EBS-backed EMIs in 12 steps. These steps can be used on AWS as well, but instead of creating an instance store-backed AMI first, Ubuntu has already provided AMIs that can be used as the building block instance on AWS. Let’s get started.

Prerequisites

On Eucalyptus and AWS, it is required the user has the appropriate IAM policy in order to perform these steps. The policy should contain the following EC2 Actions at a minimum:

RunInstances

AttachVolume

AuthorizeSecurityGroupEgress

AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress

CreateKeyPair

CreateSnapshot

CreateVolume

DescribeImages

DescribeInstances

DescribeInstanceStatus

DescribeSnapshots

DetachVolume

RegisterImage

In addition, the user needs an access key ID and secret key. For more information, check out the following resources:

Thats it! You have successfully created an EBS-backed EMI/AMI. As mentioned earlier, these steps can be used on AWS just as well (just skip steps 1 & 2, and use one of the Ubuntu Cloud Images in the AWS region of your choice). Enjoy!